Good day, everyone, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Quebecor Inc.'s Financial Results for the Q2 2023 Conference Call. I would like to introduce Hugues Simard, Chief Financial Officer of Quebecor Inc. Please go ahead. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this Quebecor conference call. My name, as was said earlier, is Hugues Simard. I'm the CFO, joining me to discuss our financial and operating results for the Q2 of this year is Pierre Karl Péladeau, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Anyone unable to attend the conference call will be able to listen as usual to a recording by telephone or webcast. Access details are available on our website at www.quebecor.com. The recording will be available until November the eleventh. As usual, I also want to inform you that certain statements made on the call today may be considered forward-looking, we would refer you to the risk factors outlined in today's press release and reports filed by the corporation with the regulatory authorities. I will now turn the floor to Pierre Karl. Merci, Hugues, good afternoon, everyone, or good morning. Depends, you know? Yes, it should say good morning. Sorry about that. ... Not completely far away. I am happy to report today the financial and operational results of our first quarter of operations, consolidating the activity of Freedom Mobile. You know, we closed this very important transaction on April the 3rd and have been hard at work to put in place the numerous key milestones and realignments needed to execute our carefully planned, crucial back-to-school season. We are in the midst of it right now, and I have to say that I'm very pleased with the engagement and performance of our teams to further enhance Freedom Market's position and to reinvigorate the competitive dynamics in Canada. As we have said many times before, for us to succeed in our new endeavor and for true wireless competition to succeed and last in Canada, we need fair, reasonable roaming and MVNO rates that are in line with the government and CRTC objectives. In that context, we are pleased with the July twenty-fourth decision by the CRTC in the final offer, offer arbitration process between Quebecor and Rogers, which choose our position in setting the rates for access to Rogers' wireless network. The decision indicates that the CRTC and its new leadership are committed to increase competition in Canada telecom industry while encouraging network investments. The rates selected by the CRTC, which are in line with international rates, will enable Quebecor and its subsidiary to offer plans that are more affordable, accessible, and competitive across Canada to the benefit of consumers. We could not be more encouraged and positive with the new pro-competition leadership at the CRTC, especially compared with the previous one, with whom we sometimes had to wait two years or even more to have a decision. Quick, effective decision-making is clearly to the benefit of all Canadians. That being said, our negotiated... Sorry, our negotiations with the two other incumbents, no surprise there, remain difficult and no agreement has been reached yet, despite our repeated good-faith attempt. We had no other choices than to submit another request for final offer arbitration before the CRTC. We have just recently started the FOA process with Bell. In addition, it is essential that incumbents carriers be required to offer TPIA services through aggregated FTTH facilities for us to become a truly fourth national player in wireless and wireline services in the rest of Canada. There are no justifiable reason to slow down access procedures other than dilatory games being played by the Telecoms. In comparison, we and other cable operators have always diligently provided access to our coax network to TPIAs, even the ones acquired at very hefty prices by Bell. Quite simply, we need to gain swift access to Bell and other incumbents, FTTH, to compete directly with them and offer greater speed access at lower prices. The only reason why Bell offered the same 1.5 gig on FTTH at CAD 90 a month, compared to CAD 60 a month in Montreal, well, you have guessed it, is that TPIAs and others don't have access to a competitive price on FTTH. Actually, going by the regulated FTTP access rate of CAD 129.79, Bell is selling its gig at a loss, supposedly. While on the regulatory front, I would like to add that with respect to the new Broadcasting Act, Bill C-11, the CRTC and the government must introduce more regulatory flexibility and lightening the regulatory framework that is too burdensome for us from an administrative and financial standpoint. They must impose on foreign platforms a contribution obligation dedicated to Canadian content, rather than an obligation to have Canadian programming expenditures to preserve the competitiveness of Canada, of Canadian companies, and not accelerate the decline of our Canadian broadcasting system. To quickly remedy the precarious situation of private television, it is imperative to immediately withdraw advertising from all CBC Radio-Canada platforms to put an end to unfair competition and race for ratings. Finally, we welcome the adoption of Bill C-18 on June 22nd. As you know, following this passage, Meta announced that it would block Canadian media content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms and has just recently started doing so. Google announced that by December of this year, it will no longer offer News Showcase in Canada. In response, Quebecor withdrew all advertising investment from its subsidiary and business unit on Facebook and Instagram. In its solidarity with the Canadian media, the Quebec government, the federal government, numerous municipalities, and organizations have suspended their advertising on Meta, and several organizations have announced that they are redirecting their advertising investments towards the news media to the detriment of web giants. Quebecor has long argued that to preserve the industry's sustainability and vitality, original content from the various platforms had to be included in this bill. Creation of a payment system is necessary in view of the web giants' market dominance. These platforms use the content produced by Canadian news organizations to generate a significant portion of the interaction of their network and must pay a fair price for it. Before turning to our operational results, I would like to highlight that Quebecor, on a consolidated basis, has generated CAD 455 million in cash flow from operation in the Q2 of 2023, and an increase of 26% over the same quarter of 2022. The Telecom segment, with the addition of Freedom, improved its cash flow from operation by 25% to CAD 462 million, and its EBITDA also by 25% to CAD 608 million in the quarter, while maintaining the best margin in the industry. National performance is better than Bell's and Telus. Allow us to start paying down debt as opposed to borrowing to service our dividend policy. I will now review our operational results, starting with our Telecom segment. In Telecom, this is our first quarter at the helm of Freedom Mobile, where our teams are focused on delivering on our promises of more competition and lower prices for Canadians. Despite insidious efforts by Telus to block the transaction, as we all learned in front of the Competition Tribunal. Remember the code-named Project Fox, where Quebecor was described as a danger? We succeeded with the support of pro-competition policies of the government of Canada, who is determined to offer Canadians truly competitive prices. Quite simply, we have been doing what we said we would, with the addition of 10% more domestic data to all existing Freedom subscribers and a price freeze on existing plans for all current, current and future customers. We have also launched our 5G services on July 27 and have significantly improved the network connectivity to nationwide coverage, seamless roaming, and affordable international mobile plans. Consolidation of Freedom added over 1.8 million subscribers to our wireless customer base, in essence, doubling it at 3.6 million RGUs. Despite a Q2 characterized by intense competition and quick reactivity, we managed to record 49,000 wireless net adds in that period. Churn rate on postpaid customers increased 0.2% this quarter, mostly due to the addition of Freedom, where we are determined to reduce churn with our 5G network deployment, improve reliability and connectivity, and new affordable plans. Seamless handover from one network to another without interruption or dropped calls, which is now functional between Freedom and Rogers, as it had been between Videotron and Rogers in Quebec as part of our joint network agreement, now gives all carriers access, access to essentially the same network. It is ironic to see Bell's flanker brand, Virgin, boasting that it runs on a network that is larger and faster than Freedom's. Certainly not the first or the last that we see hiding disputable ads from Bell. While we focus on reinvigorating our newly acquired Freedom brand outside of Quebec, we did not take our eyes off of our own market, as shown by our 34% combined share of growth adds in Quebec for our two brands, Videotron and Fizz combined, according to our Léger survey or a Léger survey, by far the largest combined share of growth adds of all operators in Quebec in the quarter. This clearly demonstrates the strength and complementary of our brands and without a doubt confirms Videotron as the leader in wireless services in Quebec. Our wireless EBITDA more than doubled to CAD 251 million in the quarter due to the addition of Freedom, of course, as well as increases in service revenues and handset sales. Wireless ARPU decreased slightly following the acquisition of Freedom Mobile, as expected. In broadband, we posted 5,300 net adds this quarter, excluding third-party resellers, despite the increasingly competitive market environment. Internet ARPU improved by CAD 0.76 or 1.4% over the last year, again, resulting from pricing optimization and brand positioning, allowing us to overcome the diluted effect of Fizz and lower plan, lower plan mix. Through price optimization, improved brand positioning, and churn management, with continued mitigation of customer decline in traditional services, we continue to generate growth in wireline revenues and margins. In a market, again, characterized by ongoing cord shaving and cord cutting, we managed to slow this trend down in television for a 6th consecutive quarter by optimizing the positioning of our brands and the pricing of our illico and illico platforms, thereby improving our ARPU. This quarter, we reduced television decline in subscribers by 15% compared to last year. Finally, we are reaching the end of the project Opération haute vitesse in Quebec remote areas, which has now reached 96% of the total planned kilometers. We expect to see a continued increase in connected homes over the next few months. Our 5G deployment in the province of Quebec continued to stay on track in terms of operational sites deployed. Turning to our media segment. Despite advertising market conditions that remain challenging, especially in television, we have continued to invest significantly in the production of unique, differentiated, and highly popular content to ensure continued leading ratings and maintain our position as Quebec undisputed destination for broadcasting information and entertainment. Our strategy was successful, as TVA still dominates its market, increasing its consolidated market share by 0.4 part to 42.7% in the quarter, compared to Radio-Canada 18.3% and Bell Media 19.4% respective market shares. TVA is also broadcasting four of the five most-watched TV shows in Quebec, including The Daily Show Indéfendable, with an average audience of over 1.5 million. La Voix, the local version of The Voice, and the new reality TV show, Sortez-moi d'ici!, which is the local adaptation of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! That being said, as the economic and technological environments are profoundly transforming the very foundation of the broadcasting industry in Quebec and around the world, Group TVA continued to generate losses in its Q2. As nothing, unfortunately, points out to an improvement in these conditions, we must act and rethink how we operate these businesses. Finally, our sports and entertainment division maintained its Q1 momentum with a sizzling array of major shows in the quarter, including the Depeche Mode, Disturbed, Nickelback, and Shania Twain. Second edition of our popular Cigale Festival is already fully booked, and the premiere of our new musical, The Bodyguard, was a great success, which bodes very well for the upcoming 54 shows until November. Finally, the Quebec Remparts, Remparts de Québec, where Guy Lafleur played in 1969, won the Memorial Cup, beating the Seattle Thunderbirds in the grand final in Kamloops, and capping a very successful year of hockey in Quebec City. I will now let you review our detailed financial results. Merci, Pierre-Karl. Turning to our financial results, our telecom segment generated $462 million in cash flow from operations, a 25% increase, and EBITDA also increased, as Pierre Karl mentioned earlier, 25% in the quarter, and EBITDA margin stood at 51%. Revenues reached $1.2 billion, up 32% compared to the same quarter last year. While the addition of Freedom Mobile accounts for most of the revenue growth, the Videotron and Fizz brands continue to deliver growth in wireless and internet service revenues. On the OpEx side, the increase of 42% in the quarter compared to last year is due to the consolidation, of course, of Freedom Mobile, as the cost containment initiatives on the Videotron and Fizz sides continue to pay off, translating into our increasing and industry-leading EBITDA margin on those brands. Telecom CapEx spending, excluding the acquisition of spectrum licenses, was up CAD 28 million in the quarter as compared to last year, solely due to our investments in Freedom Mobile. In the quarter, we continued to increase our investment levels on key initiatives such as LTE Advanced, 5G, network extensions, and geographic expansion in all markets. On a consolidated basis in the Q2, Quebecor's revenues reached CAD 1.4 billion, up 25%. Revenues from our telecom segment were up 32% to CAD 1.2 billion, mainly due to Freedom. Revenues in the media segment decreased 4% to CAD 180 million in the quarter, while our sports and entertainment segment grew 8% to CAD 49 million. Our adjusted cash flows from operations increased CAD 94 million in the quarter, 26%, to CAD 455 million, once again demonstrating our continued operational and financial discipline. Adjusted cash flows from operations for Telecom also grew CAD 92 million, or 25% to CAD 462 million. Quebecor's EBITDA was up 23% to CAD 605 million in the quarter, mainly due to the impact of the Freedom Mobile acquisition. Telecom segment generated CAD 608 million of EBITDA, up CAD 120 million, or 25%. Quebecor reported a net income attributable to shareholders of CAD 174 million in the quarter, or CAD 0.75 per share, compared to a net income of CAD 157 million, or CAD 0.66 per share in the same quarter last year. Adjusted income from continuing operations, excluding unusual items and gains or losses on valuation of financial instruments, came in at $182 million, or $0.79 per share, compared to $162 million, or $0.68 per share last year. For the first six months of the year, Quebecor's revenues were up 14%, $2.5 billion, and EBITDA was up 12% to $1.05 billion. EBITDA from our telecom segment grew 14% to $1.08 billion for the period, an improvement of $134 million. As at the end of the quarter, our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 3.52 times, up from 3.27 times reported at the end of the Q2 last year and has improved since the closing of the transaction. On April 3, 2023, Videotron entered into a new $2.1 billion secured term credit facility with a syndicate of financial institutions to finance the acquisition of Freedom. The term credit facility consists of three tranches of equal size, maturing in October 2024, April 2026, and April 2027, bearing interest at bankers' acceptance rate, secured overnight financing rate, Canadian prime rate or U.S. prime rate, plus a premium determined by Videotron's leverage ratio. Available liquidity of $1.6 billion at the end of the Q2, and our growing free cash flows are, will be more than sufficient to fulfill our commitments and maintain our very strong balance sheet. During the first six months of the year, we didn't purchase any Class B shares. Please note that the board on that topic, upon termination of the August 22nd program, has approved the renewal of the program for one additional year. We thank you for your attention and will now open the lines for your questions. All right. First question comes from Maher Yaghi from Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Good, good morning. I wanted to ask you, as you indicated, it looks like Videotron and Fizz continue to have strong results on gross loading in Quebec. I was wondering if you can share with us your initial views on the performance of Freedom in Ontario and Western Canada since you acquired the business. What are the key highlights that you found so far in terms of the relaunch and, you know, how is the loading behaved since you acquired the business? Just to follow up on that, during the acquisition review, you indicated that, you know, offering a bundled wireless internet service is essential to reduce churn on the Freedom brand. I assume that you don't need access to fiber-to-the-home to launch internet because you have access to the Rogers network. should we expect this service to be launched shortly, or it will take some time to see you guys offer a bundled product in the marketplace? Thank you. Thank you, Maher. I'll try to answer as, as efficiently as possible. We, we all saw that, you know, the market became suddenly more competitive in Ontario. I guess that, you know, we should not be surprised. We're looking, you know, to move ahead. We were looking, obviously, also to respect the conditions that we agreed upon with the government as the capacity to take over Freedom, and prices reduction was announced. We were not even there, that flanker brands of our competitors, of incumbents, you know, were in the market with much lower pricing. Will this continue? I guess, you know, the landscape is changing dramatically, and I guess this is probably why. I'm not doing any politics here, but if I was, I would certainly, you know, consider this, this possibility that, you know, having a fourth national player will certainly have this, this result. This is basically what we, what, what took place since, you know, the closing of the transaction. We can't completely anticipate what will take place in the future, but this is certainly, you know, where we are today. A different world and a different landscape. We will continue to offer, and as you probably saw, you know, we're moving one step to the other. We announced new pricing. We announced nationwide, 10% more data, 5G. You can. Obviously, you know, you will easily understand I will not give you details for competition reasons, but you can anticipate that there's other things to come. It will, it will be known in the marketplace in, in due time. This is certainly not the end of the competitive environment. I would say it's probably the opposite. It's the beginning of a, of a more interesting thing. All the regulations and thinking of legislative or government and administrative authority, administration, are to get this activity more competitive. It's not only a wireless activity, it's a telecom activity, so you need to include other things, which is certainly something that, you know, we've been doing in Quebec and will have the capacity of doing so elsewhere. The acquisition of VMedia was a certain, and the anticipation of getting in the wireless business outside of Quebec, and it fits with our marketing strategy moving forward. I don't know, PK, if you have anything, you know, to add. No, I mean, just in terms of loading, as, as, you know, as Jacques said, this was, this was our first quarter, you know, so certainly, you know, we haven't, we haven't fully rolled out the plan that Jacques was referring to and the various steps that we had referred to earlier. You know, we'll see. Now we're in the midst of back to school and, you know, let's see how the autumn comes around. You know, Maher, we, we, we won't give you guidance on the, certainly on loading, but, you know, I think it's to be expected that Q3 will be more, will continue to be more, just as competitive and, as, Q2 was, with probably more activity. I was writing to our employees, thanking them a few days ago. Different achievement that we've been able, you know, to realize, since the inception of the transaction. It was, it's finished by, "Stay tuned!" Exactly. As to your second question, in terms of bundling, you know, this is something that is part of the various steps that we talked about. That's, you know, that's another one that's coming. It will be as we've said, you know, it'll be, you know, we're staging these things as we go along, it is to be expected over the next weeks and months. You know, we won't give you a specific timing as of this morning. Great. Thank you, and best of luck. Thanks, man. All right. Next question comes from Jérome Dubreuil from Desjardins. Please go ahead, Jérome. Merci, bonjour, everyone. Thanks for, for taking my question. The first one is on, is on wireless. I just wanna make sure that I understood right, that the wireless EBITDA in the quarter was CAD 251 million. Is this, is this coming with some sort of, higher spend that we should expect in the third quarter, given the launch of 5G and, and maybe a, a step up in advertising? How should we basically model, these margins going forward? Jérome, yes. First of all, yes, CAD 251 million is the wireless, is the consolidated wireless EBITDA. I think it's fair. What you said is, is, is a fair portraying of the coming quarter with, you know, as we've said, you know, it'll be. You know, the fall is seasonally more active and more promotional. There, you know, I think it is to be expected that we will invest a little bit more in advertising and in branding. I, I think, yeah, I think your expectation is there. It still looks like a very strong margin. The second one is, I'd just like you to expand a bit on your position on the TPIA review. You know, obviously, you're targeting more bundling in the rest of the country outside of Quebec. The bulk of your EBITDA is still coming from your from your broadband business in Quebec, and that could potentially be affected by lower TPIA rates. I just want you to expand a bit more on your positioning on that front. Thanks. Maybe, Jérome, I could mention again that, you know, we've been always offered, offering TPIAs. In fact, you know, we were the biggest provider of outside connection to most of the TPIAs in Quebec. If, you know, historically, we were to restore a little bit, you know, the landscape in Canada, Quebec was the area where you would get the highest penetration of TPIAs compared to, whatever, Ontario on the western side. As naturally, you know, they were considering that the cable or the coax hybrid, it would be the best network to deliver either broadband or television. This is technically on top of which that the. If you were to go FTTH, just don't think about it, it was not accessible. First, Bell will give any sorts of reason to forbid access, and if you were to achieve, after efforts and efforts, and efforts, and efforts, you will have a price which make no sense, you know, to offer a broadband pricing offer, you know, below CAD 120, where, you know, the retail price was, let's say, between CAD 50 and CAD 70. This is the environment that, you know, we've been living, so we are used to compete with TPIAs. We are used to offer different kind of marketing approach, and we are used also, you know, to generate revenues from our networks from different sources. We hope that we will be able also, as TPIAs, as we were, and this is interesting, Jérome, maybe I would like to repeat that for some of you that forgot it. You know, Bell had a monopoly in the Abitibi area, where they own the telecom business, Télébec, and the cable business, Cablev ision. You know, we decided, you know, to offer services there as a TPIA. You can imagine. In fact, you know, we're in front of the Competition Tribunal because it took so long to get access, you know, to their network, and now it's back, it's an issue of having access to the poles, and we're not the same, the only ones that are having problems to have access to the pole. We started as a TPIA, and we succeeded pretty quickly of adding a significant market share. We are, or we decided that, you know, we will build our own network after our customer base is justifying it. All those things is of our experience and propose us, you know, certainly a learning curve of what we will do in the future. We look forward to have access as quickly as possible, and we feel that, again, the CRTC, and with this procompetitive policy, will, will accelerate our capacity to have the TPIA access, and then being able, you know, to offer a bundle services. Great, very helpful. Merci beaucoup. All right, next question comes from Vince Valentini, from TD Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks very much. Let me start with a couple of balance sheet and cash flow questions, just to make sure we're all on the same page. Your, your debt seemed to come in lower than, than I thought, and I think many people thought, post, paying for Freedom. Hugh, are there any significant restructuring or transaction costs that were not incurred in the Q2 that may, you know, the cash may go out in the third or fourth quarters instead? Nope, nope, nope. We are, you know, there's our transaction fees are all in this quarter. There, there were a few actually in the previous quarter, the rest of it is in this quarter, about CAD 12 million, that's all in there. Okay. How about CapEx related, especially related to 5G? We've all seen that you launched the 5G network in several cities, so I assume that money got spent in the Q2, or is there somehow a working capital thing where you got the equipment from vendors and didn't have to pay for it till later? Is there any cash impact, potentially timing issues there? No, no, no. There are no timing issues. I mean, if anything, Vince, it is a little bit the conversation we... I think we had had in the past saying, you know, one of the positive surprises, I think when we got to, when we finally got our hands on Freedom, was how advanced they were in terms of almost being ready to turn the 5G on in many markets, you know. A lot of that investment had already been made. We, you know, we made the rest this quarter, and we're in a position to launch in the main market. But no, to answer your question specifically, there are no, there are no, you know, there's no mountain coming, in front of us. No surprises. There are no surprises coming in front of us, no. Okay. Yeah, I know. I appreciate the answer. Just, you know, when we see such a big variance versus our estimates, just wanna make sure we're not missing something. The last piece of this line of questioning is just on the lease liabilities then. We see in your statements- Yep. -that it's gone up about $220 million from the end of Q1 to the end of Q2. That, that doesn't, that's not as much as we expected. Is there any risk that the rating agencies and S&P would, would have a different way of valuing the lease liabilities so that they may come up with a different leverage ratio than, than 3.52? Slightly, yeah. There, there always is, and you know that, and you see that in their reports. You know, there's always a little bit of a, of a tweaking. You know, we're, we're hardly ever exactly, certainly not to the second decimal, equal to the, you know, the leverage, between the, the various calculations of S&P or Moody's, or actually, even between themselves, they're slightly different. There, there's probably a little bit of tweaking there, but nothing major. We've already been through that with them, it's not gonna be major. I mean, the, the, the main difference that you're referring to is obviously the way Shaw used to value leases, as opposed to how we value leases at, at Videotron, and that explains the difference from what you were expecting to what we ended up putting on the balance sheet. As you know, Vince, this is all accounting, right? I mean, at the end of the month, we're still paying these leases and going on with, you know, with life, you know? Okay. Changing topics to operating costs, just to follow on Jérome's question a little bit. The marketing and advertising costs probably go up in the third quarter and the fourth quarter as you wrap up and in their busier promotional seasons. That seems clear. I'm wondering on the other operating costs, you know, there were certain deal benefits that you negotiated with Rogers, things like roaming and backhaul. Did you achieve a full three months run rate of all of those savings in the Q2, or is there any potential improvement in the pace in Q3? I think the, the, the answer to that, Vince, is that there's gonna be some puts and some takes. You know, I, I don't think we've, we certainly haven't, you know, really experienced, all of the various synergies or positive, OpEx, savings that we will get from the various, deals that we've made or the various, you know, changes that we're, that, that we're putting in place. At the same time, you know, there will be, probably on the other side, a few other, investments that will be needed. You know what? It'll be, I, I, I think there's more positive ahead of us than, than the negative, certainly, but there'll be puts and takes on the, on the OpEx side. I think that we can say that, you know, we're really at the beginning of the integration process. Yes. There will certainly other savings that will show up in the future. Okay. The last question I have, hopefully for you, Pierre Karl, but you feel free to jump in if you want. The pace of customer ads at Freedom, you've already been asked about it 2 times. I wanna ask just in a, in a different way: You seem pretty happy with how things are going and, you know, maybe it's a bit more of a, a marathon than a sprint, and you're gradually rolling out all of your new tactics. We obviously haven't. The bundling isn't there yet. We haven't seen the Fizz brand yet, so there's obviously more things to come in the future. Given where you're at in the evolution, are you satisfied with the number of customers you're adding on a weekly or monthly basis, or are you looking at the team and saying, "Hey, this, this is not good enough. We need to be doing a lot more sub adds than this in, in the Freedom territory? I, you know, I would say, Vince, that, you know, we are, and I am very satisfied. ... with what we've been able to achieve, you know, in a so short period of time. You know, RGU are certainly something, you know, net adds is certainly something that we watch on a daily basis. You know, also financial results and free cash flow. You know, we are just buying company, you know, and you generate a significant free cash flow after paying the interest that you need to pay on the debt you load for financing this transaction. This is the equation right now, and there's no real reasons to think that it will change in the future. When we see our competitors, being, buying companies, buying TPIAs at crazy prices, buying customers and buying revenues, not being able to, to achieve EBITDA, EBITDA increase, where their debt is increasing and their leverage is deteriorating, you know, we basically, you know, accomplished the complete opposite. In terms of RGUs, you know, we will continue to work very hard. We think that, you know, that we have many other tools in, in our basket, which we will use in the future. We do not have, you know, specific target, because, you know, we don't know how the market will react, but we will certainly react according to the market. We see the future as very positive. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Thanks, Vince. All right. Next question comes from Matthew Griffiths, from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Thanks for taking this. Just on the 5G deployment, I was wondering if you could talk about how much, you know, what the timeline is to complete it. Obviously, you've listed the cities where you've already launched, but, you know, what do you think the timeline is to get through that? On the radios that are being deployed, do they also accommodate the C-band spectrum? Sorry, we asked you that we had your second question. Yeah, your second question wasn't very clear. Can you repeat it, Matt? Yeah, sure. On the radios that you're deploying for 5G, does it operate... Operate. Do they also operate in the 3.8 GHz spectrum band? Which band? Would the acquisition of the additional spectrum down the road necessitate a revisiting of sites? Yeah. Well, maybe we'll give you also additional things. What we think it's worth to mention, Matthew, is we were not again, you know, we, we mentioned it earlier, but, you know, we were not completely surprised that the company was well advanced with their 5G deployment. As you can imagine, you know, we're in the business, so we work with, with all the suppliers, and suppliers give us, you know, the capacity to understand where they are on top of... This is also, you know, public information. There are some maps, concerning, well, which is managed by the government, which is also available. Deploying it was something that, you know, was, was easy to do, and therefore, we did it quickly. 5G is of importance, but you certainly, if that this is what you're doing in your day jobs, following the industry. We've been seeing Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, slowing down in terms of revenue of 5G. There was a lot of people two years ago or three years ago, thought that the 5G would be the end of the world, a paramount of success, and that would be the possibility, you know, to monetize and, you know, the next gold rush. We were prudent regarding, you know, this kind of inflation semantic. You know, we certainly consider that 5G is of importance. This is why, you know, we invested in the business and we're, Videotron is already in good position. This is also why, you know, we bought Spectrum and the 3,500, and what we're having now for Freedom and under Quebecor, with the 3,500 and the spectrum that Freedom already had. Piece of it was spectrum that previously was sold from Videotron, from Quebecor to Shaw. You know, we have a very interesting range of spectrum. We're moving ahead in new auction shortly. And our relationship with our suppliers give us, you know, many alternatives in dual band and equipment where, you know, it's quite interesting. Also, what we're seeing is equipment moving in the right pricing direction for us. It's not something that is going, you know. ... sky to the roof. I think it's still seriously reasonable, and then therefore, for us, maintaining, a, a normal curve in terms of, of investment, nothing that we need to rush. I mentioned in my speech that, you know, we believe that we share completely the perspective of the authorities where, you know, MVNO is available only for the companies that participate in the auction. For the auction, if you buy spectrum, you need to build in seven years down the road. You have access to MVNO, you have access to roaming, but you have an obligation to build. We have in front of us those years, which we will use to make sure that our network will fit with the way that we will service our customers. As a little bit as I described earlier, regarding the Abitibi area, the region where, you know, at one point, it's certainly more profitable for you investing and then avoid paying roaming that you need to pay when you're on another operation network, another operation competitive network. Thanks for that. maybe- I don't know if. No, you know what? I'll follow up, you know, and see if I can get some more detail after the call. Maybe I can just ask one other question. Just you, you mentioned how you're staging these initiatives as you launch, as you kind of take over the brand and, and enter the market or reenter the market as Freedom. I was just curious, I'm not asking about the timing or what the initiatives are, but what is the work that's being done? Is it... Are you still working on the systems side? Are you working on the sales and distribution side? Like, what, what is, like, what are the kind of main hurdles before certain things get launched? Thinking about, you know, Fizz and you've mentioned a little bit already about, you know, bundling internet. Just if you could give any details on what the work is behind the scenes, that would be helpful. We'll try to give you, you know, the detail that you're, you're looking for, Matthew, but, you know, we have a different BSS system than, you know, the one that we're use, we're using in Videotron. There are also things that are common. If, if I was to, to try to answer your question, I guess that, you know, we're gonna be there for the rest of the day, because obviously, as you can imagine, this is a complicated environment. It's a specific question, you know, we'll, we'll try to, to, to do our best with the question that you can write for us. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. All right, next question comes from David McFadgen from Cormark Securities. Please go ahead. Oh, great. Thank you. A couple of questions. You talk about the 49,000 wireless net adds. I was wondering if you can give us a breakdown, I don't know if you're gonna do this, but any longer, but the breakdown between Videotron and then Freedom. Can you give us the breakdown, the subbase, how many of those subscribers on the wireless side are prepaid? No. I mean, David, we, we, you know, we've decided not to, not to split, obviously, for competitive reasons, as our competitors do not, you know, between, between the various regions. When if we did that, obviously, you know, Videotron and Freedom being on mutually exclusive regions, you know, that would be fairly easy to derive certain information on, on, on Quebec versus the rest of the country. We're, we're, we're not gonna do that. In terms of prepaid and postpaid, you know, Freedom had, you know, perhaps a heavier proportion of prepaid than we would have expected or liked to be, to be quite honest, with, you know, a lower ARPU, as you know. That's, that, that is partly the impact on ARPU that, you know, that we're living through. You know, our, you know, our, our, our focus really for us is to grow both. As you know, you know, for us, I mean, prepaids and postpaids are, are, are of interest and, you know, we'll, we'll continue, we'll continue to work very hard at, at, you know, at building both. That being said, you know, we, we, we don't intend at this time to, you know, to split them out, any further than that. Sorry, sorry, David. Okay. Can you give us an update for the CapEx for the year? Sort of, sort of a range as to what you're expecting now that you've owned Freedom for a little bit? Secondly, I was wondering if you could comment on how Freedom's plans are resonating with consumers, particularly the one that offers roaming across Canada and in, and to the U.S.? How they're performing? I'm not sure I understood your question to the... Your second question with the spec. You're asking how the plans are performing with respect to roaming in the U.S.? Yeah. I'm not sure. Can you repeat? Yeah. Well, I'm just wondering if you're getting a lot of consumer interest, consumer uptake- Oh. on those plans that include the roaming across the U.S. and Canada, because as we all know, when we travel to the U.S., the roaming bill can be quite expensive. I'm just wondering what kind of uptake you're getting on that? Well, on that, you know, we, we, we, we are, you know, we're seeing very favorable market reactions on this. That was clearly, you know, that's, that's something we, we felt was, you know, was a plus for us. It's working out well, you know, so certainly in line with our expectations there. You know, and this is the season, you know, so I, I think it was, it was timely, it was a timely introduction for us. It's actually, the interest is quite, is quite significant. I have to say that that that's performing very well and at the right price, of course, making sure that this is something they didn't have before and certainly enhances, you know, the brand value for us. I think it's working out quite nicely. In terms of CapEx, your first question, no change in terms of CapEx expectancy or guidance. Obviously, this quarter was, I think it's fair to say, probably lower on the Freedom side. That will certainly, you know, change or increase over the next few quarters. That should get back in line with the guidance that we gave, you know, about the CAD 200-ish yearly guidance that we talked about last time. No, no, no expected change there. Okay. No. Okay. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Okay, thanks. Thanks, David. Thanks, David. All right, next question comes from Stephanie Price from CIBC. Please go ahead. Good morning. I wanted to touch on the strategy for regions not currently covered by the Freedom network. It sounds like the MVNO, under that agreement, you're able to start rolling out the offers for these regions today. As you think about building out the national network, you know, would you initially focus on improving the coverage area or the network quality and capacity there? Um, well, I, I mean, you know, MVNOs, uh, is for us, I mean, it's important at this point for us to continue to grow and to, to expand our, our network, of course. And, uh, so that certainly is the, uh, is, is, is the way we're going. I mean, at, at some point, as Pierre Karl mentioned, you know, this is, this is obviously, this is obviously linked with, uh, you know, under- an undertaking of, uh, of, of, uh, of construction and deployment at some point. So, you know, uh, at the right time, we will have to make the, the, uh, the right economic decision as to whether, you know, certain areas are, uh, are, are worth pursuing from an MVNO standpoint or not. Um, so but we're not quite there yet. I mean, at this point, I mean, we're, we're going in both directions that you, that you mentioned, you know, at this point to expand our network coverage. You know, we'll see how, you know, see, we'll, we'll see how the business goes in the various regions and make that decision when the, you know, when the time comes. Okay, thanks. And then just, just circling back on the, the FTTH wholesale access. Just curious around how important that access is for you, just given the preferred rate you have with Rogers. You know, is there a significant percentage of your wireless subs that maybe wouldn't you know, overlap with that Rogers Cable footprint here? Well, it's important because obviously, you know, we know that this is certainly, you know, a... Some competitors would say that, you know, we're the owner of FTTH. You know, cable companies already also have some fiber, and this is not something unique. We, we all know that this is a technological, powerful way, you know, to move forward. That doesn't mean that it's, it's, you know, it's, the historical networks are not good. Don't worry, you know, the cable industry also is moving forward with technology. Then, you know, if to answer specifically the question is because, you know, the, the, the wire are there and the density is something of importance. You know, there's a CO in a central office, you know, as we call in the telecom industry, located in Toronto at the Adelaide. Adelaide, I'm sorry, which is the more dense in Canada. We would like to have access to this CO to be able, you know, to have access to the largest amount of people, you know, to a CO. Is this important? Yes, it is. Is this that, you know, will change dramatically, the things that if we were not to have access? No, I would say that it's not fair for any alternative carrier to do not have access, you know, to this specific network, where the cable industry had been always, of course, and obliged. We did it also as a revenue source, of opening it, you know, to other carrier. It's a, it's a question of identity or- Fairness. fairness. Yeah, fairness. Okay, thanks for the color. Thanks, Stephanie. All right, the last question comes from Drew McReynolds from RBC. Yeah, thanks very much, and good afternoon. Hugh, just, just back to Vince's question. You know, I think a little confused on the price tag that was published through the process for Freedom, and I can't really reconcile, you know, that with what's either going through your financial statements or what's being assigned to capitalized leases. I mean, we can certainly take this offline, but can you, at a high level, explain kinda how, you know, you could value capitalized leases perhaps so different than how Shaw was doing it? Just some clarification there would be helpful. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, Drew, it's, it's, it's, I mean, you know, leases are, are, you know, are valued different ways by different, by different operators from an accounting standpoint. Now, we're, we're talking about accounting, right? Let's, let's be clear on this. I mean, leases are basically, I mean, we, we continue to pay leases obviously every month, and we are paying what we were expecting to pay, with respect to these leases that are both, you know, network leases or, or, you know, retail, you know, related leases. From an accounting standpoint, though, you know, Shaw, we were you know, the number we had in mind when we referred earlier to, you know, the time of the transaction, to a CAD 2.8 billion transaction with roughly CAD 700 million of leases for a net CAD 2.1 purchase price. That CAD 700 million was basically valued according to Shaw's methods of valuation leases, which, well, I'll give you an example, included renewals for most of them. We valued these same leases according to Videotron, our historical way of valuing them, which is, you know, turned out to be quite different, and that explains the difference between the two. At the end of the day, this is, you know, this is the, this is the, the, the accounting valuation that goes on the balance sheet, and due to the new IFRS regulations, as you know. At the end of the day, you know, this, it's an operating cost that that keeps, you know, going through the P&L, and that and that, you know, will continue to show up obviously as we go along, and we'll restructure and streamline and optimize these leases as we go along. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. For all, I'm sorry, you know, I cannot just ignore what I, I had on my desk earlier, you know, today. It's not from the equity side, it's from the debt side. Comes from the analyst at BMO, Nicolas Kim. It's 6 lines, and I'll go shortly with that. "We continue to view Quebecor as the most underrated Canadian telco credit, offering investment-grade quality credit exposure at high-yield spreads with a small near-term investment-grade crossover potential and upside potential spreads should gap significantly tighter with IG. For perspective, Quebecor is rated high mid BB with a 3.5 leverage, while Rogers is rated low BBB with 5.1 leverage. Telus is rated mid BBB with 3.7 leverage. BCE is rated high BBB with 3.5 leverage. I would, you know, just not mentioning it, I, I would sleep badly tonight. Thank you, all, being with us this morning, and look forward to, to talk to you at, our next conference call. Have a nice day. Everyone, this concludes the Quebecor Inc.'s financial results for the 2023 Q2 conference call. Thank you for your participation, and have a nice day.